Shares from the Hungarian National Museum.
Shares first appeared in the economic life of the modern era of Europe. The ‘company limited by shares’ corporations became popular in the first half of the 19th century. After 1867, thousands of companies limited by shares were formed during the decades of the economic boom within the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This form of companies remained an important actor of the economic life in the country until the socialization in 1949.
The company limited by shares form appeared again in Hungary as of the last years of the socialist regime, in the second half of the 1980s. But at the beginning of the 2000s, the obligation of issuing shares on paper was abolished.
The museum’s collection consists of about 2600 shares, of which we publish about 1600 pieces. We introduce the oldest shares of different issues of companies.